


what did i settle for? just a metaphor (of falsehoods that felt like a home)

by Yellow_Bird_On_Richland



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dani is Kissin Kate Barlow, Dani's only haunted by comphet and rigid societal expectations, F/F, F/M, I just pictured Jamie saying "I can fix that" to Dani and ran from there, If you read Holes back in the day and didn't ship those two what were you even doing, Jamie is Sam, Slight Holes AU vibe to the whole thing, Slow Burn, Suburbia, explorations of domesticity, gonna include most of the other bly manor regulars, no ghosts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27792121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland/pseuds/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland
Summary: "Windows in this place are a right bitch, aren't they?"She turns toward the voice at her classroom door--a woman's English brogue. It's distinctly, hysterically out of place in Iowa, as is her flippant cursing."Yeah," Dani answers, nodding a bit dumbly."Don't worry…?"She seems to be waiting for an introduction."I'm...Dani. Dani Clayton.""Jamie Taylor," the woman replies, with a firm handshake. Almost a man's handshake. "And don't you worry, Dani Clayton." She nods at the window, gives it a cheeky grin like it's a misbehaving student. "I can fix that."Dani's not sure what happens first: registering new life at her words or forgetting how to breathe.
Relationships: Dani Clayton & Edmund O'Mara, Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 103
Kudos: 240





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Bly Manor/Holes suburbia AU that no one asked for.
> 
> Fic title adapted from "Forgot How To Dream" by Ekali and K.Flay.

"Danielle? Honey?"

The endless questioning if she dares go to the bathroom at any point while cooking dinner makes her want to scream. Or maybe yell. That would be more appropriate, given that the word "yell" itself is embedded in the end of her name, she thinks, in that dark little snippet of her mind that never quite stops whispering in spidery, lowercase cursive, in the barely-there hum of aged fluorescent classroom lights and inefficient break room refrigerators: _wrong, wrong, wrong._

The constant addition of pet names is really what gets to her. As if she'd be rendered mute unless Eddie tacked one sugary addition on every last time he called to her. Ones like "babe" and "babydoll" make her feel lusted after in a way that's never sat right in her stomach, not ever since he started trying to kiss her in earnest when they were thirteen or fourteen. And gentler ones like "sweetheart" and "darling" seem designed to render her infantile and ill with their cloying, sickly sweetness.

She must be wired improperly, mustn't she, because she sees plenty of women at restaurants glow when their boyfriends or fiancés or husbands address them with such supposedly loving terms. And yet. And yet. Dread and a brittle breeze are all she ever registers in her stomach at such attempts at affection from her husband.

She used to be able to lie to herself, to claim she was simply cold, unable to offer up the kind of joyful love that other women gave their men because she'd been spat out by a broken home. Dead father plus absent mother equals daughter shattered like a mirror mishandled by careless movers, a chip off a cracked block. An unfortunate equation to be sure, and a painful story to share, but an easy one to point to, to blame, to hide behind.

Until that damn shop girl had thawed her out in seconds.

A touch of her shoulder here, a compliment there, a hand brushing dangerously low across her lower back—they'd formed a makeshift holy trinity that split Dani at the seams and set her heart pounding furiously against her rib cage and she'd finally admitted to herself, _"That's how Eddie's supposed to make me feel. But I don't. And it's not even that he doesn't do it. It's that he can't. No one who's supposed to love me can."_

His family, thank God, had assumed she was overcome with emotion once she'd broken down in tears, and she was, just not the ones they'd associated with the day, with Dani trying on her wedding dress.

"Danielle?"

"Sorry, just focusing on dinner, dear," she murmurs, tossing out her best, slightly harried smile, trying to not screw up her face even though the word "dear" tastes like a dead lemon on her tongue.

It's probably not healthy to perpetually be on auto-pilot at home, to walk into a kitchen and prepare a lightly seasoned shrimp scampi pasta with no real recollection of when she started running the frozen shrimp under the tap or whether or not she salted the pasta water. That sort of behavior is how ovens get left on, how fires start, how houses burn down to nothing and leave haunted ground and she'd be released from this half-gilded cage of a life, one way or another…

 _"Stop it,"_ Dani hisses at herself. _"You chose this life. You chose Eddie."_

But can you genuinely choose anything, truthfully say "yes" with confidence, if you can't say no?

It's so, so much easier for men. Being an unmarried man through old age may not be encouraged, per se, but it's perfectly acceptable. And if anyone questions a forty year old bachelor as to why he's single? Well, it's because he's only met bitches, shrews, and spinsters, all of whom are eminently undesirable of his time, his attention, his money (even if he's only offering minute amounts of those three currencies). Or his love interest wanted to have a career instead of kids, so who could blame him for tossing her to the curb in that case?

She cracks more pepper over her angel hair pasta than is strictly necessary, but the noisy turn of the pepper grinder masks the grinding of her teeth.

"Did you have a nice day at work?" she asks automatically. Unsure of when she and Eddie turned into robots, when she lost her ability to improv with him.

"Decent," he shrugs. "Wingrave got our whole office tickets to the baseball game this weekend. As a little summer party, of sorts."

"Oh. That's good of him. Really good of him," she adds, though she's speaking more toward her own interest in the generosity of Eddie's boss, for she'll finally have the better part of a Saturday or Sunday to herself, to _breathe_ , she hopes; the house somehow simultaneously overwhelms her with its cavernous size while being so small that its two inhabitants continually step on each other's toes. It's an eternal, awkward reprise of their opening wedding dance: Dani unable to anticipate Eddie's movements, unable to do anything but backpedal, backpedal, backpedal until he pulls her stiff body close.

"Yeah, he's got all of us really good seats. It'll be nice to make a day out of it, don't you think?"

He's looking at her, waiting for a response, and her dream of a few hours alone vanishes in the hopefulness etched on his face.

"Oh, I—I thought it was just an office thing. I'm invited?"

"Yep!" Eddie beams at her, then frowns; she's utterly incapable of injecting any more false enthusiasm into her face when her life's already an eternal list of chores. "What's the matter, sweetheart? You loved going to Iowa Cubs games when we were kids."

" _Exactly. When we were kids,"_ she thinks desperately, despairingly. _"Back when we could share popcorn and you didn't try to grab my hand every time. When we were both watching the game and I didn't feel your eyes glued to me. Back before you turned me into performance art."_

That dastardly little bugger in the back of her head kicks into a higher whine, the way it always does when she turns the blame outward. Turns darker. Chants _liar, liar, liar_ as a follow-up to _wrong, wrong, wrong._

She can never get off this carousel, but must stay on it, must swallow down the bile rising in her throat, must smile through it.

"Just worried a bit about school, I guess, since it's already nearly August. Wanting to make sure my lesson plans are totally in order, those sorts of things," she lies about the slender ray of light that will arrive at the end of next month, the week before Labor Day.

Her comfort in the classroom is the most natural extension of her traumatized childhood, since she spent countless hours in libraries and after-school clubs, when she wasn't hanging out at the O'Mara house. She knows, firsthand, what a difference a positive, predictable school environment can make on a child, and if there's one thing she has confidence in, it's her ability to deliver that environment for her students.

"Aah," he comments unwittingly, with the slight air of superiority that's infiltrated too many of his mannerisms over the years. "Worried about having to go back to seeing the little rugrats all the time after the nice, long break?"

If she screams the question that's in her mind—"when did you stop knowing me?"—she'll sound hysterical.

If she whispers it, she'll be frightening.

If she asks it as calmly as possible—well, she's not allowed to be rational, now, is she?

She nods, tight-lipped, murmurs, "Yep. S'pose that's it."

_Wrong, wrong, wrong. Liar, liar, liar._

Eddie at least has the sense to pick up that something's not quite right, and he asks, with a touch of gentility in his voice, "So you're good to come to the game on Saturday?"

These trick questions, these illusions of choice, clog the arteries of her life, but she always lets them, because what else can she do?

"Yep. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It'll be nice."

_Wrong, wrong, wrong. Liar, liar, liar._


	2. Chapter 2

"I don't see why I have to change," Dani protests. "We're going to a minor league baseball game, Eddie. How is _this_ ," she gestures at her jeans, her gray Iowa Cubs t-shirt, and blue Cubs hat, "inappropriate?"

Eddie sighs and pushes his slipping glasses up his nose. "It's just, Wingrave is a rather no nonsense, stiffly formal kind of guy. Makes a sort of big deal out of family, I think because he comes from a rather broken one himself. If you could just wear something a bit more…"

"A bit more what?" Dani demands. Her voice rings out authoritatively, and she likes the way it echoes in the bedroom.

Well. It's Eddie's bedroom, really. The house is in his name, bought with his money, and try as she might to craft a space for herself, Dani feels more like a long-term guest than a true occupant, than a true homemaker.

"A bit more feminine," Eddie hedges. "Please, Danielle." He offers a winning smile, wheedles, "For me."

As if that's not become the limited scope of her existence. Being Eddie's ball of clay.

"Fine," she agrees, with a slight grumble. "But I'm taking the hat with me to shade my eyes."

Pathetic, what's come to constitute rebellion for her. She longs to unlearn civility and compromise. The latter's supposedly a tenet of marriage, but who's defining those terms, exactly? Because, by her calculations, fifteen of her concessions are only worth about one from Eddie.

He nods sanctimoniously, victoriously, as he gives her a one-armed hug, murmurs, "Thanks, love," and offers a perfunctory kiss on the lips.

She trades her jeans for khakis, her old t-shirt for a slightly more business casual one—purple with white stripes on it—and the hat looks stupid with the new outfit, so she leaves it at Eddie's house.

" _At home,"_ she tells herself as they pull away, as she wants nothing more than to exit the car and run back inside and steal a precious sliver of time for herself to do whatever she likes—read, nap, watch TV—with neither an audience nor expectations. _"You're leaving it at home."_

She should be comfortable in the domestic sphere. That's what's expected of her. And home should be a clean, well-lighted place, to borrow from Hemingway. But even when Eddie's gone, she feels like an intruder, as if the home's very foundations know exactly who and what she is.

Even though Dani rarely lets herself consider the clinical term of her identity, she rather wishes the house could manifest its knowledge, that one morning Eddie would stumble into the bathroom to shower and see, scrawled across the mirror, in all caps, in lipstick or shaving cream: _Your wife is a lesbian._

She can't help but laugh wildly at the mental image and Eddie's neck cracks as he turns to look at her. "Something funny?"

"Just thinking…" she tugs on her memory's strings and produces one that gives her reasonable cover. "Remember the one ball game we went to the summer before eighth grade? When that drunk guy was heckling the opponent by politely and sarcastically yelling things like 'Please run home, sir!' or 'Get a base hit, sir!'?

"Ah, yeah, and stadium security didn't want to come get him except those parents were concerned about his disorderly conduct," Eddie laughs. "And then he said…"

"How was he being disorderly when he was showing manners and calling all the players sir?" Dani finishes with a chuckle of her own, as Eddie nods fondly at her remembering and lays a hand over hers softly, without clutching, without grabbing.

Living like this—if she could somehow suspend the two of them in this bubble—would be bearable. Enjoyable, even, at times. A semi-sexless existence. Innocent fun. They could be adults at work, sure, but revert to their early teenage selves at home. It wouldn't be perfect for either one of them, of course, but selfishly, she'd be able to let her shoulders drop from their sentry near her ears and just exist. As Eddie's friend, Danielle. Not as Mrs. O'Mara, not as a wife, not as a daughter-in-law. Just Danielle. Just herself.

The moment lasts longer than she expects it to, through the ticket gate and the concession line for hot dogs and pops, but then they arrive at their seats, next to Wingrave and one of Eddie's coworkers—Peter Quint, Dani's pretty sure, is his name—and it's like he's helpless to do anything but absorb their spirits of detached boredom. His introduction is merely the opening salvo of an appraisal. An opportunity to make sure she measures up and ticks all the boxes. There is no interest in her, only what she represents relative to Eddie.

"Nice to meet you, Danielle." Wingrave reaches across Eddie to offer her a quick handshake, a slight nod, and, yes, Eddie's description of "no nonsense" certainly tracks.

"Pleasure to meet you at last, Mrs. O'Mara." Quint shoots her an oil slick of a smile, all smarmy charm despite the fact that she's spoken for. Not that she particularly enjoys that concept, but there's something to be said for respecting boundaries, and she wants to set them herself. So she merely tips her head toward him in a cool nod and replies in an even crisper tone, "It's Mrs. Clayton, actually."

She's erased so much of her life that she may as well be a mirage, on the verge of being sucked into the butter yellow wallpaper in the bedroom. Preserving her name, for what little it may be worth, tethers her to her fellow teachers, to her past students, who always knew her as Miss Clayton before the wedding. Maintaining that touchpoint is well worth the red flash of irritation that flits across Eddie's face whenever he's reminded of her refusal.

"Is it, now?" Peter adjusts his gaze to grin at Eddie, and both his look and the honeyed layering of his accent suggest a touch of incredulity. Make it clear that he's saying, _"You're letting your wife play at this little joke?"_

" _Defend me,"_ she thinks furiously; she'd rather not rely on Eddie, but in this instance, it's a matter of honor and pride, right? _"Speak up and put this...this overgrown_ _boy_ _in his place."_

Eddie takes a long sip of Coke before chomping on a bite of his hot dog, and she thinks she'll have to do the dirty work herself before he responds, quietly, "It's from her being a teacher, Peter. Keeping a predictable classroom for her students."

She smiles at him sans reservation, the way they did as kids. Maybe, just maybe, this whole day will go alright. "Thank you, Eddie."

Wingrave pipes up, "What grades do you teach, Mrs. O...er, Mrs. Clayton?"

"Please, call me Danielle," she responds. "And I teach fourth grade."

"Ah. My niece and nephew are sandwiched between your class, then. They'll be in third and fifth this year."

She's about to say more beyond, "That's nice," is on the verge of asking if they're close relatives, when Eddie gently grips her arm to convey a small warning.

The conversations stay light for a while in between the game's action, even if Peter Quint remains something of a jackass. The Cubs' first baseman hits a pair of towering moonshots in the middle innings to put Iowa up 6-2 heading into the seventh inning stretch.

Which is where it all goes wrong.

**

It's no one's fault, really, that they collectively notice a mom and dad hustling out of the stadium during the break, with screaming, overstimulated toddlers in tow, clearly in the midst of a meltdown.

"That'll be you two in a few years," Wingrave nods approvingly, and Peter adds, "Good thing you've had plenty of experience wrangling little tykes as a teacher, huh, Danielle?"

His accent's the only thing lending his voice any warmth, since his comment rings hollow, and her stomach feels just as empty as it nearly drops out of her.

"I suppose it will be," Eddie chuckles, clapping a hand over Dani's knee. "Right, honey?"

She's always known, in some way, that her life's been lurching toward this, toward children. Having them, that is. That there's only one right answer to Eddie's question that's not at all a question.

" _Idiot,"_ she berates herself. _"As if not ever discussing this would make it simply go away?"_

It's not that she doesn't love children. She does, obviously, as an educator. It's just—the absolute _consumption_ of having a baby, in particular, that turns her stomach sour. It's the way the word mother signifies cook, cleaner, confidant, nurturer, story-teller, good cop, bad cop, nurse, and more. Always more, more, more, as if she can just give, give, give until there's nothing left of her for herself to hang on to. If—if they could just adopt—if she could start parenting a child at kindergarten or first grade age, one with a small modicum of independence, she could easily do that and love them as if they were her own. But, of course, that's not a viable option. And not having a child at all? Even less so.

" _You knew that, though. You always did. And you never said no."_

" _Ah, yes, because being a single woman in the eighties in semi-rural Iowa is so easy."_

She shuts off the whirring, warring gears in her mind for a moment to answer, or not answer, as considerately as possible. "We're still thinking about that. It's a lot of responsibility."

That's not a copout, and she's educated enough children with threadbare clothes, with dirt-smudged faces that aren't the result of playing outside, with bruises from clumsiness that somehow never manifests itself in the classroom, to wish that people had to take some kind of exam to become parents.

" _Would Eddie pass? Would I? More importantly, would we pass together?"_

She snaps herself back out of her head and adds, in an attempt to crack the ice that's rapidly thickening beneath her inadequate answer to fulfill a biological calling that doesn't truly fit her, "Plus, with teaching, I have between twenty and twenty-five kids to take care of every year already."

"Well, sure. But. You won't always be teaching." Eddie glances away from her, toward Peter and Wingrave, shooting them a conciliatory grin, and she's been outflanked. "At least, not while our kids are little. After that, we'll see," he shrugs, as if a flimsy concession that's at least three to five years out will hold any future value.

He looks back at his two colleagues _again_ and she knows she's lost him, even before he says, in a grotesquely grandiose proclamation, "You don't even have to work now if you don't want to, Danielle."

She ensures that the words "I want to" escape from her mouth on an even keel, rather than as a growl or snarl, but she can't quite keep the edge of desperation at bay, seeing as she has to justify her fucking livelihood. "I like teaching. I'm good at it. You know that."

"You seem plenty smart," Peter interrupts, further goading her as he flashes that skeevy smile and notes, "I'm sure you'd pick up housekeeping in no time."

Dani tamps her anger down, lets it cool to a frosty chill that's a good twenty degrees below the temperature at the ballpark.

She can feel it, on the ride home, her and Eddie's marriage splintering. She knows they're hobbling toward the future on crutches, and she almost wants him to lose his temper, to yell, to assign blame, to ask, "Why can't we make this work?"

But he's not that kind of man, and she's not sure if bravery alone can sustain her, so they beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly back into one another, into tradition, into a role, into a box.

" _Can you call a wreck an accident if you've spotted it coming from miles away?"_ she whispers to herself.

She'd rather not answer, but the standard reply rings out in triplicate, as always: _wrong, wrong, wrong._

**

"Dammit all—dang it."

Dani's always been careful to censor herself and limit profanity when she's at school, lest she slip into the habit of using bad language around any kids, but she's fumbled her thumbtacks twice now and stabbed herself once while trying to put up a good behavior chart.

She normally loves these activities and the promise of a new academic year—prepping the classroom before students arrive in a couple of weeks, making the space welcoming and warm, yet still professional enough to keep her fourth graders on task. But today, she recalls Eddie's comments about how she should be willing to just lop off this piece of her identity like it's some out-of-place tree branch, like motherhood should override personhood, and she feels ill at ease rather than settled and centered.

Her irritation might also have something to do with the mid-August scorcher that's barreled through town. The school's air conditioning is barely functional at the best of times, and it's not even on yet—the perks of trying to patch together an education on a shoestring budget. And three of the classroom windows, including the one nearest her desk, are stubbornly stuck in place, the wood warped through age, humidity, and sticky heat. Dani grits her teeth as she tries and fails to pry one of them open again.

"Windows in this place are a right bitch, aren't they?"

Dani turns toward the unexpected voice at her classroom door—a woman's English brogue. It's distinctly, hysterically out of place in Iowa, as is her flippant cursing.

"Yeah," she answers, nodding a bit dumbly.

"Don't worry…?"

This mystery woman seems to be waiting for an introduction.

"I'm…"

She's debating between going with Danielle or Mrs. Clayton when she starts speaking, the words—a reinvention of herself—tumbling past her lips without her conscious permission.

"I'm Dani. Dani Clayton."

She is not, has never been, a Dani, not since she was five or so. And even then, her dad was the only one to use the nickname. But she likes its sharpness, the way the edge of it cuts at her tongue.

"Jamie Taylor. New handywoman, maintenance person, part-time gardener. Sorta got a catch-all position here," the brunette replies, giving her a firm handshake. Almost a man's handshake. "And don't you worry, Dani Clayton." She nods at the row of windows, gives each one a cheeky grin like they're a small pack of misbehaving but generally decent students. "I can fix that."

Dani's not sure what happens first: registering new life at her words or forgetting how to breathe.

Jamie strides across the room, rummages around in her tool belt for a second, retrieves a putty knife, and taps it in place a few times along the bottom of one window with a spare block of wood she pulls from her back pocket. Dani marvels at the speed of her hands, at the exacting precision and nimbleness of her movements. They're careful yet effortless, calculated and casual all at once, and—

She could say that her sharp intake of breath is at the _whoosh_ of the breeze as Jamie flings the window open, except there isn't even a hint of a wind gust.

She purposely looks away and then tidies up her pristine desk as Jamie sorts out the other two windows, but she can easily imagine the way her biceps and forearms flex as she opens them.

"There we are," Jamie comments approvingly. "Should be fine now, even with the heat. They probably hadn't been opened since, what, June?"

"Yeah," Dani agrees, since that sounds right. "So you're the new, um, handywoman, then?"

"Aye, I am." She nods proudly, seriously, and her jawline is firm and _stop it, Dani, you're not allowed to think things like that._

"How'd you end up in Iowa? It's just. The accent."

Jamie winces. "Ah, it's a bit of a long story. Used to work for a family in England. Still do, once in a while. They moved here and...well, it's not my tale to tell."

Dani watches her shift awkwardly and answers, "Ah, I see," though she doesn't. She jerks her head at the windows. "Thanks for taking care of that for me. Really appreciate it."

"No problem. I should prob'ly go check the rest of 'em in the other rooms." Jamie turns back at the threshold of Dani's doorway and tosses an easy grin in her direction. "Be seein' you around, then, Dani Clayton?"

"Yeah. Yeah, Jamie Taylor," she murmurs back as she repeats, still star-struck, "Be seein' you."


	3. Chapter 3

Dani wills her heartbeat to slow and politely requests her pulse to stop racing. Tells herself to forget Jamie, then chastises herself for doing it.

She hasn't been in a position like this, where she could admire one particular woman over repeated interactions, not just in passing—say, at the grocery store—since college.

Since Jacqueline Frasier.

Her name shouldn't taste like an ex, as they did nothing, were nothing, not even really an ex-possibility, and Dani doesn't know what having an ex feels like, anyway. She's only ever been with Eddie, even when she hasn't necessarily wanted to.

She and Jacqueline had been acquaintances, had taken seats next to each other in some mandatory math elective she can't recall the name of during her junior year of college. She doesn't remember much about the course, but her list of Jacqueline-related facts has remained intact. Her mind disobeys her pleas to forget and flicks through them:

1) She could solve for variables in algebraic equations with dizzying speed and pinpoint accuracy.

2) She was studious, but had an outsized laugh that didn't quite fit her tall, lean, drink of water body.

3) Her untidy, angled scrawl—half cursive, half print—only occasionally rivaled the messiness embedded in her honey blonde updo.

4) She looked despicably attractive in sundresses.

The start of fall semester always represented a rebellion—all Daisy Duke shorts and low-cut tops—the end of a summer love affair before the days shortened and winter's brittle fingers broke things off with a snap.

Spring, in contrast, rolled out of bed slowly in a gentler awakening that spoke more to Dani's quiet sensibilities. And it brought the start of Jacqueline (never Jackie) wearing sleeveless sundresses that ended just above the knee. They were never remotely close to promiscuous, but Dani remembers choking on the stale, late afternoon classroom air the first time she saw her in a light blue one with a sunflower pattern, just the same.

Sort of how she'd had to catch her breath at the sight of Jamie repairing her classroom windows.

 _"But we're done thinking about Jamie,"_ Dani warns herself as she finishes arranging her classroom. She might come back once more before school starts to double check on it, though.

She can't ignore how the encounter lightens her spirit, much as she wants to, and she nearly laughs at the absurdity as she throws together a white cheddar and chicken salad topped with apple slices for dinner. At the fact that one chance encounter with an attractive woman makes life so much more bearable, and she doesn't feel quite so cold at Eddie's greeting kiss.

"Seems like you're in a cheery mood tonight, Danielle," he comments as they get settled at the table. "Have a nice day?"

"Mmhmm. Got my classroom more or less in order, that's always a good feeling."

"Did you see any of your teacher friends there?"

She shakes her head and her mind's telling her to stay silent, but she won't comply. "I met the new handy-woman. Or, um, maintenance person, I guess you'd call her. Jamie," she adds, trying not to savor the way her name feels in her mouth, how forming the _"mie"_ at the end presses her lips together. "She helped unstick a few windows in my classroom."

Eddie doesn't say anything for a few seconds while he's taking a bite of his salad, and Dani's about to reciprocate his earlier question about work when he goes, "Huh."

"What?"

He shrugs. "Just haven't heard of a school, or any place, really, having a woman on their maintenance staff."

"Some businesses have to, I'd think," Dani answers, a touch defiantly. "And with how old the school is, the board and the principal must have reviewed her credentials carefully."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure," Eddie cajoles her in that infuriatingly placating voice that says, _"I'll let you be right for once, Danielle."_

She drops her irritation and discontent in the dishwasher as they clean up together and idly wonders if her negativity will recycle into their home. If it'll haunt them like a slow-forming gas leak.

Dani's never been one for ghost stories. When she was younger, she figured it was because her dad died and her mom wasted away into a shell, but now, she knows it's because she's slowly becoming a ghost herself. Though if she could slip out of her body and lose her grip on consciousness—slide into sleeping just before Eddie's kisses turn too lecherous and his lolling tongue takes up too much space in her mouth and then wake in the morning—she'd strongly consider the offer.

She can be a (barely) passable simulacrum of (hetero)sexuality once or twice a month, even if she'd rather not participate in the paint by numbers performance. She knows what to say, what to do, how to move her body, but it's all ersatz. She wants to claw her way out of her skin or maybe burrow deeper into it, tucked away some place where she can't register how or where he's touching her. Eddie's clumsiness isn't the product of rushed passion, of not knowing due to the newness of their bodies or the innocence of youth. It's from not knowing her, period, and his futile attempts at establishing a moment and an experience they'll remember only strengthen Dani's desire to go slack and define her temporarily bed-ridden presence with her absence.

The lie that "it's good" shouldn't come to her so easily, shouldn't be delivered so convincingly, but she's had a good decade and a half of practice in offering it up. She lobs it up like a softball, and Eddie always connects, and it grants her the reprieve to sleep and forget, once the customary guilt for being unable to give herself to him stops assuaging her.

Dani tries not to consider just how often she wants to forget, or what a life without that coping mechanism might look like.

**

She does not want to forget this. She can't, fortunately. That flawless, first day of school cursive is ingrained in her muscle memory, in the _step, slide, step_ routine she's perfected over the years as she writes her name large on the board before this year's batch of fourth graders arrive.

All goes well early on. She offers the more outgoing and confident students handshakes and waves to the ones who, like her, are more shy. She's set them on developing ice breakers and is going around the room, collecting their responses and working to commit them to memory, when a student raises his hand.

"Yes…" her mind flashes back to her seating chart. "What is it, Kevin?"

"My desk is wobbly," he informs her, and it tips side to side far too easily as he tugs at it a bit.

"Not to worry—I can fix that." She registers a chill racing down her spine as she repeats Jamie's line while she rummages through the supply closet for a second. She retrieves a bit of cardboard and some scissors, and cuts a spare piece out, then slides it under the unstable desk leg.

"That'll do for now, and I'll get the maintenance person in to make a more permanent fix when she's available," Dani promises, and it takes her a second to fully banish the thought of Jamie from her mind so she can offer her students her full attention.

She seeks Jamie out at lunch, but she can't find her in the cafeteria, and the door to the small custodial office is closed. She starts walking back toward her own classroom, and if she hurries, she can leave a note for Jamie before her next class starts. It'd be irresponsible to not fix this desk problem as soon as possible, she tells herself. That's the only reason she's so—

She nearly runs smack into someone, gasps, "I'm sorry, I'm—"

"You on a mission or summat?"

That voice—lightly teasing, distinctly from Northern England—might be the death of her.

"I—sorry—I," she stammers out her apology, "I was looking for you, actually, Jamie."

Jamie gives her a small nod. "Well, you certainly found me. What can I do for you, Ms. Clayton?"

"It's a desk," she answers abruptly. "One of my students, I mean. One of their desks. It has a wobbly leg. I put a bit of cardboard down, but I figured you might have a longer term solution."

"You figured right. I could take a look at it now, if you've got time."

She wants to have it, but a glance at her watch dashes her hopes. "My class will be back from recess in a couple of minutes."

"I'll pop by at the end of the day, then," Jamie suggests.

"Sure, that works for me. Thank you."

Jamie waves off her gratitude. "'S all part of the job. See you a touch after 3, then, Ms. Clayton."

"Please," she breathes out just before the bell rings, just before she really has to be getting along. "Call me Dani."

Her voice almost shakes with near-pathetic desperation and Jamie's looking at her a touch funny and she must think she's a weirdo and—

Jamie grins. "Alright. Didn't know how chummy the school would want the help to get with the staff, but if you wanna go by Dani, then Dani it is." She tosses a casual head tilt in her direction as she turns back to wade through a crowd of students, and Dani needs a long drink of water before she's prepared to address her kids as they return from recess.

**

Dani works on memorizing her seating chart, on marking her students' different achievement levels on the diagnostic math and English Language Arts tests she'd put them through earlier, when she hears a light knock at her door.

"Nice classroom," Jamie comments. Dani watches her admire the neat as a pin bulletin boards and the bookshelves in the reading area by the back of the room, and in a way, it's a bit of validation she didn't know she wanted—her students appreciate the resources, but they don't see the time and money she sinks into buying and staging them. "Good space for kids."

"They deserve it," Dani answers, willing herself not to blush at the praise as she quickly moves toward the desk that needs repairing. "So, it's this one."

"Ah, yep," Jamie nods as she spots the cardboard on the ground. "I can fix that."

" _Could you maybe fix me? Make me someone who effortlessly loves her husband?"_ Dani wonders hopefully as she watches Jamie tighten a screw in the chair leg. _"Or could you break me entirely? Let me exist exactly as I am. As Ms. Clayton. As Dani."_

The thought's as reckless as she used to be as a 9 year old, furiously pedaling her bike down the massive, angled hill off Prospect Street. She wants to indulge it further and—

"Scissors?"

"Um, what?"

"D'you have a pair of scissors handy?" Jamie repeats. "I wanna cut down this rubber stopper so it fits the foot of the desk better."

"Oh, yeah, just a sec," Dani mutters. She flips them around so the cutting edge isn't pointed at Jamie and passes them over.

"You're really good with your hands," Dani acknowledges without thinking.

She doesn't mean for the compliment to come out flirty, and more than anything, it's true. Jamie's naturally suited for her work, for the careful physicality it entails.

"Just part of who I am, I s'pose. It's a bit embarrassing, really," Jamie admits. "I got caught up with a bad crowd as a teenager. Took to repairing stolen cars and either helping to resell 'em or stripping 'em down for parts. In a way, it all worked out since I'm here, but in another…" she sighs. "You ever wonder what paths your life could've taken if a few things had been different? If you took a fork that went right instead of left, that sorta thing?"

" _At least once a week since I turned fifteen,"_ she answers internally before she speaks up. "Yeah, I've considered that idea here and there. What it might be like if I'd been more rebellious. Besides underage drinking, about the craziest thing I ever did was lie about buying a roll instead of a bagel at the grocery store."

Jamie chuckles wistfully as she jams the bit of rubber on the bottom of the desk leg, but Dani hears a trace of pain and bitterness underpinning her tone. "My dad probably wished I'd been more like that. He worked in a coal mine, and when he was at home, he was around, but he wasn't...around, if you get what I mean." She rocks the desk from side to side again, but it holds steady now. "There we go. I'm, uh…" she hooks a thumb toward the door. "Gonna head out, unless you need anything else?"

Dani shakes her head. "No, no, I should be going, too. Thank you, again, so much. Sorry for having to call on you twice already this year."

Jamie tips her a two finger salute as she backs out of the doorway. "Not a problem. I'll, erm, see you around, then, maybe?"

"I'm sure," Dani answers, with a touch too much conviction, so she adds, for propriety's sake, "It's a pretty small school, after all."

She hesitates.

It's not too late to be a bit of a rebel, is it? No. She's not quite thirty, yet.

"And, Jamie?" she follows up quickly, before she's out of earshot and the moment cracks.

"Hmm?"

Dani approaches her slowly, wanting to carve out a sliver of intimacy for this. "I—I did get what you meant. About your dad being there, but not there, exactly. My dad passed away when I was a kid and my mom went through something similar. My, um, now-husband," a two-syllable word shouldn't coat her tongue with ash, but that one always does, "and his mom took care of me when mine couldn't."

Jamie's left arm spasms for a second, as if she's going to reach out, but thinks better of it, and Dani wants, so badly, to tell her, _"It's fine. You can,"_ but she's not that brave.

"It's difficult, isn't it," Jamie murmurs. "Trying to raise yourself when you're only a kid." Dani nods and Jamie glances down at her hand. "Don't know how I missed that, before. Nice ring your husband got you."

"Thanks," she replies automatically, politely, though she'd rather talk of anything else, would rather not think about how it's an O'Mara heirloom, another reminder of how she's supposed to integrate into the family and fold herself up tighter and tighter year after year like she's a fucking origami crane.

It should terrify her, how Jamie's got a bead on her moods already, how she can clearly sense the stiffness in her gratitude, but the relief at being seen and heard outweighs the fright. They meander out to their respective cars in the parking lot together, and Jamie nearly whispers, with such a thick accent that Dani has to bend close to her to hear it, "'Preciate you listening, Dani. Not a lot of people do. And I usually find people fuckin' exhausting, honestly."

Her smile shouldn't split her face this wide. "You're welcome. And I'm a teacher—gotta have good listening skills to handle kids. And their parents, sometimes."

"You ever need anyone to tell 'em off, you come find me, yeah? I'm not afraid to threaten anyone with pruning shears." She must see Dani's face fall a bit, because she quickly adds, "I'm on'y joking. Mostly. Unless you've got some awful, overbearing bully of a mum or dad on your case."

"I'll remember that if I need it," Dani laughs. It's the first true laugh she's let loose since she and Eddie were headed to the ball game, and its authenticity re-kindles her earlier rebellion to life. "Hey, Jamie. I, um, have a free period Friday. Don't have to do cafeteria duty during lunch, if you'd want to maybe get a bite to eat together?"

"This Friday?" she asks, and Dani's stomach plummets at the frown on her face. "I—I dunno. I've just got a lot to do with kids already breaking things and needing to make sure the flowers are in order before the weather turns."

" _You should've known better. You shouldn't have been so desperate,"_ Dani hisses at herself as she answers, with all the false cheer she can muster, "Oh, that's fine. No problem."

"Is it just this Friday, though? Cause I could do other Fridays, for sure. It'd be nice. Have a friendly face to see. Outside of doing classroom repairs," Jamie jokes.

"It's—I'm free most Fridays for lunch," Dani answers, her flip-flopping emotions turning her light-headed.

"Alright, then. Another Friday," Jamie nods, and Dani recognizes the movement from when she'd fixed up the windows and the desk. It's brisk. It's firm. It's confirmation.

"Another Friday," Dani echoes, and she's never wanted to fast-forward on a weekend more than she does right now as she pulls out of the parking lot.


	4. Chapter 4

Neither next Friday, nor the Friday after that, bring Jamie to the threshold of Dani's classroom around noon.

She eats her ham and cheese sandwich and apple and bag of chips. She works on grading, on updating her curricula and teaching materials and lesson plans for the following Monday, as she should. And she goes home and makes dinner, or gets slightly dolled up so Eddie can take her out on an early weekend date, as she should.

She lets her silly little dream of striking up a friendship with Jamie die on the vine. She can make do with being friends of Eddie's friends' wives. It's what she's supposed to do, what they're supposed to do, this paring down their lives, matching up with others who are paired off, too. And then they'll have kids and they'll be her ultimate achievement. Because living for oneself is a strictly masculine goal to target.

It'd be funny to consider if it wasn't so sad. The way the ultimate act of womanhood, of creating a new life, doubles as self-erasure in the end. Because if Dani doesn't live for her children, then she's obviously doing something _wrong, wrong, wrong._

Fortunately, Eddie's been swamped with work and hasn't really considered the topic of having a child in earnest with her recently. She's pretty decent at the caretaking part of marriage and tries not to consider the implications of their home feeling happy and content when they're both too tired to talk much. There's the occasional warning sign, like the glare flashing off Eddie's glasses when she nimbly dodges around pointed comments like "you could tutor students part-time and it'd be less taxing" or "surely it'd be nice to not have to wake up every morning at six to go in to work."

Dani answers, as sweetly and resolutely as possible, every time, "I'm fine teaching for now. If I feel any other way, you'll be the first to know, love."

So it goes on another Friday, with a perfunctory kiss goodbye as Eddie departs first. "You wanna maybe get Mexican for dinner tonight?" he suggests on his way out the door. "That new place downtown, Taqueria Los Mayas, is supposed to be fantastic."

He butchers the pronunciation—to be honest, she's not sure if _any_ native born Iowan can pull off even a mediocre Spanish accent—and she laughs gently and nods. "Sure. Sounds good to me, Eddie."

It's a fairly quiet teaching day, or as quiet as a day in a school can be, since she's giving her students a math test during third period. Between answering some of their questions and helping as much as is legally permissible, she's got some time to start prepping for their next unit. She scheduled the rest of the day to be fairly easy for them: a review of how to critically read informational texts ahead of their first large research project for ELA, and an introduction to fossils and geology as part of their earth science unit.

She's paging through the second chapter of _The Age of Innocence_ —Newland Archer's societal dilemmas have always spoken to her—when a voice interrupts her literary reverie.

"Sorry, Dani, are you busy?"

Her neck cracks from how fast she turns her head toward the door. Because there's only one person who calls her Dani.

She shakes her head mutely, and Jamie goes on, a bit hesitantly, "Is Friday lunch still open?"

Dani finally clutches onto her voice. "Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Come in, Jamie. Just a second…" she pulls up one of the couple of extra chairs she keeps for administrators conducting classroom reviews, or student teachers, when she gets one in the spring, and swings it round the front of her desk.

It's not a mistake in the traditional sense. After all, where else could Jamie sit?

But as she settles in and pulls a roast beef sandwich, an apple, and a chocolate cupcake out of her bag, Dani recognizes the danger she's accidentally designed. Because the setup of sitting across from one another and having a meal together?

Well, it looks like a date. A crude, rudimentary one, but a date, nonetheless, even though it can't be one.

"So, Dani Clayton," Jamie starts, and her name sounds like a dream in her accent, "I'm guessing you were one of those folks who nearly always wanted to teach?"

"Good insight," she answers, willing her voice to stay even. "How'd you know?"

Jamie gestures around the room. "It's obvious you care," she replies, then adds, with a smirk, "And someone whose biggest rebellion was lying about what breakfast item they got from the grocery would have the right temper for the job."

"You…" she changes tack, rewrites her sentence. "You aren't wrong." Because saying _you remembered_ would be downright pathetic, would imply she can recall (all too easily) details of what Jamie's said to her in brief snippets of conversations. "I owed a lot to the teachers who could've let me slip through the cracks, and I enjoy the work, for as crazy and frustrating it can be, sometimes. Love the kids, too, for the most part."

"You're a better woman than me," Jamie remarks. "Can't imagine trying to educate students and manage a classroom. I'd be bound to botch it."

"It does take a lot of practice. But I'm sure I couldn't do your job, either." She pulls a wisp of a memory free. "Do you like the repair work most, or the gardening?"

"Gardening, for sure." She's grinning at Dani as if to say, _"Thanks for remembering that,"_ and this back and forth volley shouldn't be coming to her with a bare minimum of effort. Jamie adds wistfully, "The dream would be to open my own floristry. Wouldn't have to deal with so many bloody people. Or rotten little high school gutter-snipes. Sorry," she tacks on her apology afterwards.

Dani waves it aside. "It's fine, a lot of kids cop pretty big attitudes by the time they're that age, anyway." She hesitates a second, unsure if she should speak her mind, but being with Jamie seems to unlock these morsels of courage. "Nice that you have a dream. I'm not sure I do, exactly."

It's the issue with so many faerie tales, she thinks. They close at the wedding, treat it like a panacea when it might only be a placebo, at best. Though maybe they've got one bit correct: situating marriage as an ending, rather than a beginning.

"There's gotta be something, right?" Jamie encourages her with a tone that seems to gently demand, _"Share more with me."_

"I've always wanted to travel by myself. To a big city. Could be New York, or somewhere else. Maybe get a little lost. It—it wears on you, living in a place where everyone's known you for your entire life."

The anonymity, that's a best any woman like her can hope for, isn't it? To shed her skin, as it were, through invisibility, for a spell?

Because she can't dream of her truest, basest desire for self-definition, though she earns tastes of it here, every time Jamie calls her Dani.

She frets that she's sounding too wild, too untamed, and she's searching for a safe harbor where she can dock this conversation when Jamie asserts, her accent thick with emotion, "Aye. It does. Grew up in a place like that, back home, in England. 'S like a fuckin' gravity well you can't outrun no matter how hard you accelerate."

"It's like being a Salem witch, having rocks piled on your chest while you're drowning, except you're still expected to breathe," Dani responds fervently; it's an image she often contemplates when she thinks a smidge too hard about just what she is and how a town redder than a rare steak at Joe's Diner might react to the release of her true identity.

"I know a little summat about that," Jamie volunteers. "Bein' considered a witch, I mean."

"You do?" Dani asks with a frown, not quite sure if this is serious or a joke.

"Sure. I'm a single woman who knows her way 'round a buncha plants, I can use tools, and I'm not all that in'erested in finding myself a husband."

"You're—you're not?" she repeats dumbly.

Jamie shakes her head. "Not that all men are bad, or anything like that." She gestures across the table, in the general direction of Dani's ring finger. "I'm sure your husband's a great guy."

It should be easy to agree. To smile and nod, to say three words: "he is, thanks."

She can't find any of the motions and finds herself thinking, _"He_ _was_ _great. He was kind, and funny, and thoughtful. Now he's just kinda...there."_

Truthfully, that description goes for her, too, being present but checked out.

Her nod is jerky, her smile's in tatters, and she lacks the fortitude to meet Jamie's eyes as she allows, "He's nice."

"How'd you two meet?"

She'd much rather rewind to Jamie's comment about not being interested in finding a husband than discuss her own, but lingering on that seems a touch improper, a shade impolite, and she'd rather talk to Jamie than have no conversation with her at all, so she answers, "We grew up together. Down the street from each other."

"Childhood sweethearts, then?"

Dani catches the tone change in her voice, the flat note rather than the syrupy "aww" she so often receives, as if Eddie's persistence should be celebrated rather than critiqued. As if the inevitability behind them was a comfort, not a leash.

She could repudiate Jamie right now. Make as if they're drifting through life together on a cloud when they're really traveling in a buggy pulled by a horse with a gimp leg.

She doesn't.

"Yeah. Eddie was just always around, and we were friends forever, at first. Then we sort of fell together in high school, you know?"

" _You only fell because he kept pushing and pushing until keeping your footing was too damn impossible."_

"Sure. Falling can be easy," Jamie hums. "Effortless, even."

Dani catches the disconnect, the dissonance between her tone and her words, and she steadies her hands back to avoid reaching out for Jamie's, to avoid fixing her with an intense stare as she urgently whispers, _"You get it. You know."_

The bell chimes, cracking the moment, and all the glue sticks in Dani's supply cupboard can't hold it together.

"Sorry," Jamie flashes her a quick smile. "Didn't realize I'd been here so long. I'll let you get back to imparting an invaluable education on today's youth."

"It's fine," Dani reassures her as she packs up her lunch bag. "Thanks for stopping by, Jamie. This was...great."

Judging by her smirk, she's pretty sure Jamie catches the little reference back to when she'd asked about Eddie.

"Yeah. Yeah, it was, Dani. Same time next week, maybe?"

"Maybe. I'll have to check my schedule, but, um, I'll let you know?"

She senses the danger here, in the way their questions are more formalities than anything, but she revels in the race of her pulse, just the same, when Jamie nods and answers, "You do that," just before she raps her knuckles smartly on the doorframe and takes her leave.

At least her students are filing back in from recess, so she has a plausible excuse for staring in that general direction.

**

"Ready to go, sweetheart?"

"Yes, dear," she replies automatically, willing a smile to magically spread across her features.

She can muster up _some_ excitement for this, surely.

"I'm really excited to try this place," Eddie confides to her as they pull out of the driveway. "It's supposed to be really top-notch."

"Sounds great," Dani agrees, trying to match her husband's enthusiasm.

"Plus, we haven't gotten to go on a real date in awhile. Sorry it's been such a madhouse at work."

She casually dismisses his concern. "I get it, hon. It's fine."

Truthfully, it's more than fine, it's _great_ , to avoid the performances, the need to select just the right clothes (neither too casual nor too stuffy), to figure out whether or not she should spritz a tiny bit of extra perfume on, to make conversation when it perpetually feels like she or Eddie have dental gauze trapped in their gums, muddying up attempts at speech, and—

"It's important, don't you think?"

"Sorry, I missed what you said—must be a bit too focused on thinking about what I might order," Dani lies quickly. "What was that, Eddie?"

"One of the guys at the office mentioned it's important for married couples to keep dating like they did when they were young." She sees Eddie blush, and smile, and her heart aches for his effort because it's almost painfully obvious. And if she could recalibrate herself to love him properly, the way he loves her, she'd at least contemplate doing it for a good long while.

"Oh. Yeah, I suppose it is." For partners who are both truly in love.

Try as she might to avoid admitting it, Dani knows they're doomed to a lifetime of missed connections. They're two magnets pulled in the same direction, but not toward each other, an inconvenient truth that's further cemented when she catches herself studying the swirled star tattoos on their waitress' left wrist as she brings over a piping hot basket of tortilla chips.

"Looks good, doesn't it?"

Eddie nods at the classic Mexican appetizer, mistaking where her gaze went, as always, and Dani swallows her truth down with homemade salsa and a small, sad smile. "Yep. Looks good."

Their conversation creaks wearily along familiar train tracks—work, school, the weather—until she tries to derail it.

"Do you want to go to the library tomorrow, maybe?" she asks Eddie as he digs into his fajita. "Check some books out that we might both like?"

"Yeah, we could do that. Good idea, Danielle."

Outwardly, she knows the date comes across as a success. To Eddie, certainly. To anyone who might be watching or listening to them, too.

And yet. And yet.

"Excuse me. Just gotta go to the bathroom," she comments, injecting false brightness into her voice.

She locks the door, sits down on the toilet, buries her face in her hands, and directs her anguished screams inward.

_Why can't you love him? Why can't you be normal?_

Even now, when she's as content as can be with Eddie, her mind keeps blaring: _Wrong, wrong, wrong._

They're words she shouldn't think, but she can't erase them or reroute them or rewire herself, much as she's tried over the years.

She lets herself contemplate her lunch with Jamie, just for a second, and her mind softly offers up a terrifying verdict: _Right, right, right._


	5. Chapter 5

September rattles on, falls away into October like the leaves dropping off increasingly brittle tree branches.

Eddie's been genuinely good about not pressuring her with talk of children lately, and she's trying to meet him halfway, if not on that issue, then on the other parts of being a dutiful wife. She won't go quite so far as to say they're working, but they're managing, and that's more than she thought they could do on some days.

Even on their anniversary.

He's listening to her (she thinks, she hopes) this time, when she says, over breakfast, "We don't have to make a big deal about it, Eddie. It's…"

She mulls over options like her students trying to recall vocabulary terms before settling on, "It's wonderful to remember, but it's also just one day. And we could've gotten married a week sooner, or a week later, if we wanted. And anyway, all the rest of our days together are plenty important, aren't they?"

She's pretty sure that little tacked-on sentence will placate him a bit, but really, shouldn't it be _nice,_ to not have to worry about having the kind of wife who requests, no, demands fancy nights out and top shelf champagne and diamonds that cost a month's salary?

Eddie's face scrunches up in a frown and he squints at her like she's a finicky copy machine he wants to unjam and reboot so it'll function properly again. "But we chose _today._ "

"We also chose...forever," she reminds him; if she says the word quietly enough, he'll think she's granting it reverence, surely, rather than hiding the fact that it makes her want to grimace.

"That we did," he agrees, still sounding a tad uncertain, and Dani wants to grip him tight by the shoulders and stare him down. Wants him to make the leap. Wants to say, _"See me. See what I am, and what I'm not."_

She can't, and she doesn't want to think of how different her life would be with a few rearranged negative contractions, as she'll just mope down a path she's powerless to rearrange.

At the very least, she has her standing lunch with Jamie to anticipate. And maybe a touch too eagerly, but she might just be looking forward to the weekend.

It's Friday, after all.

**

"Don'tcha have wedding cake on the first anniversary? Innit that some strange tradition over 'ere?" Jamie wonders.

Dani wonders, too. Wonders why her mind froze up and she blurted, _"Eddie and I are going out for a casual anniversary dinner,"_ when Jamie had asked her, _"Got any plans for the weekend?"_

Well, she'll just have to deal with it.

"Normally, yes. The bakery we chose actually told us we can get a free, new slice cake from them before the end of the month way back when we signed our contract for the wedding, so I think we're gonna do that next weekend."

Jamie's eyebrows lift a smidge. "Not today?"

"No," Dani answers, wincing at the sharp jab of defensiveness in her voice before she adds, in a more conciliatory tone, "It's just a little bit out of the way. Sorta in the sticks, but their service was great, and the cake was even better."

Jamie nods at her. "Makes sense."

It's heartbreakingly alien, Dani realizes, to have her decisions respected so easily. Just...in an instant. No second-guessing.

There's two quick, smart raps at her door, and she and Jamie share a quick, confused look—they've never had their lunch interrupted—before she goes and opens it.

Eddie's on the other side, holding a bouquet of white and pink roses.

"Surprise, Danielle!" He offers her the flowers, and she accepts them gratefully—they _are_ some of her favorites—but…

She realizes she might be a touch too stunned as she notices his too-wide grin, stretched almost nervously across his face, now.

She manages to find some enthusiasm. "Thanks, Eddie! Sorry, I—I just wasn't expecting you, and it's—it is a work day, and…"

"I _do_ know your schedule, honey. I thought it'd be nice to spend part of a day together for once," he answers gently, with more grace than she thinks she deserves.

" _You should be thrilled,"_ her subconscious hisses, and she's trying to be (she is _always_ trying to be what she's not) as she nods and hitches a smile onto her face, but then Eddie's cottoned on to Jamie's presence.

"Sorry," he apologizes as he offers his hand out. "I'm Eddie, Danielle's husband." He gives a little chuckle. "Obviously, with the flowers and everything."

Dani sees the surprise register on his face as Jamie gives him a firm handshake. "Jamie Taylor."

He brightens at her name. "So you're the miss fix-it who's been making repairs around my wife's classroom!"

Something like repulsion flashes on her face for the briefest instant at the nickname before she manages a sickly cheery grin. "Yeah. Yeah, I've been known to help her out a time or two." She gestures toward the flowers, now in Dani's arms. "I can get a vase for those, if you like, Dani—Danielle."

Her full name sounds foreign coming off Jamie's lips, and the unfamiliarity renders her mute, so she just nods back. Eddie slides into Jamie's seat, and she bites her tongue to avoid saying, _"You took her chair."_

She swears she's broken, because Eddie's gesture—buying her flowers, taking the time off work to deliver them—should mean _something_ to her. But it's like he's just performing the role of _a_ husband, not _her_ husband, because she didn't want this whole kit-n-caboodle in the first place.

"So...had a good day so far?" Eddie asks, and they're fumbling toward their usual conversations when Jamie returns with a surprisingly nice vase, filled with a bit of water, that features an ornate _fleur de lis_ pattern on two sides.

Eddie's taken the flowers from Dani to put them in when Jamie intercepts them.

"Just a second, Eddie—gotta trim the stems to extend the bloom as long as possible," she explains before looking at Dani. "You have a pair of scissors handy, Danielle?"

Her name sounds a bit smoother this time, like Jamie's adjusted to it, and she retrieves a pair from the bottom drawer of her desk.

"Thanks much." Their fingers brush as Jamie takes the scissors and Dani ignores the heat in the pad of her thumb to focus her attention on how quickly and effortlessly Jamie cuts the stems down to size, to study the sharp, eagle-eyed gaze she employs to study the flowers from multiple angles. Eddie makes an awkward reach back for the bouquet and Dani extends an arm toward him to still his movement.

"Jamie's a gardener, too, she knows what she's doing," she answers in response to his irritated eye-roll.

"You're really a jack of all trades then, aren't you?" Despite his good-natured display of feigned interest, Dani can hear the irritation in Eddie's voice.

"Oh, no, I wouldn't say that," Jamie replies, in almost a hum. "I've just always been good at working with me hands, fixin' things up has always come naturally to me. And…"

She artfully arranges the flowers to hide the smaller ones and proffer center stage to the ones with the largest blooms, and Dani feels her heart swell at how Jamie makes such minute adjustments that breathe new life into the bouquet.

_This,_ she recognizes intuitively, is how one should feel about receiving a surprise floral arrangement.

"There we go," Jamie murmurs quietly once she's done before she turns to Eddie and addresses him directly. "All pretty and proper, just as you wanted it to be for your wife, I'm sure, Eddie?"

"Look at that, honey, isn't it great?" he asks Dani before he gazes back at Jamie, his opinion clearly changed from just minutes prior. "Yes—thank you, Jamie!"

Dani repeats his words slowly, praying she'll pick up on her code while Eddie only catches her dutiful tone. "Yes, thank you, Jamie. It's beautiful."

She wills her eyes to go the tiniest hint wider than normal. To say, _"It's beautiful that you made this for me. It's beautiful that you crafted this arrangement for me."_

Jamie waves away their praise and answers, "Don't mention it," to Eddie before turning her attention to Dani.

"You deserve it," she says, a hint of her rough English brogue sweeping across the floor, and it nearly sweeps Dani clean off her feet, too, as Jamie crosses the room, heading toward the hallway.

"I'll just let you two catch up for a bit. Eddie, nice to meet you and put a face to the name." She nods at him, and her gaze slides over. Dani wills her cheeks to not turn as pink as the flowers resting in the vase on her desk.

"Dani-elle," she corrects herself, though Dani half-wishes she'd slipped up, just to see Eddie's reaction, "Be seein' you around. And, erm, I was wond'rin…"

"Hmm?" Dani tosses on a casual air, like she won't cling for dear life to whatever Jamie asks.

"One o' my friends is having a Halloween party in a couple weekends, if you'd be in'erested in coming. You too, Eddie," she adds nonchalantly, and Dani thrills at the minor victory, at Eddie being the add-on rather than her.

"Sure, sounds like fun," Dani answers brightly, glowing even more at how she's answered for them. "Be seein' you, Jamie."

Jamie's footsteps recede, and as Eddie comments, without even a shred of dislike, "She seems great," it's all Dani can do to keep from busting out laughing.

"Yeah." For once, they're in total agreement on something. "She's great."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No clue where I got the idea for Dani/Eddie to wear Halloween costumes from The Princess Bride, I just felt like the mix of campy but intelligent/nuanced humor would appeal to both of them. I know Bly’s set in the 80s, so I decided to roll with it.

Dani's rather surprised, again, at how well she and Eddie can work sometimes. Like how they decide to dress up as Westley and Buttercup from _The Princess Bride_ for Jamie's friend's Halloween party.

It makes sense, as the movie's one of their new favorites in terms of comedies, and the costumes don't require a ton of work. Dani scours up a flowy, long-sleeved red dress at the local Goodwill, and Eddie finds a black shirt and black pants for his outfit, too.

The party's not actually on Halloween, since the day itself falls on a Monday, but that Friday flies by, as holiday-adjacent school days always do. It's a blur of kids hopped up on candy corn and cookies from too many classroom parties and too much movie-watching, but Dani doesn't mind. Their excitement infects her, and she's rather in the mood to party herself by the time the evening rolls around.

She's spent so long wanting to get out of her skin—it's sort of lovely she'll have an excuse to do that tonight. Eddie kisses her softly, respectfully, as they start getting changed, and she responds with the kind of easy warmth Buttercup would offer Westley.

He lets it drop there and she thinks, _"This is alright. This is nice."_

Eddie retrieves the fake plastic sword he'd bought to complete the outfit and offers his best _en garde_ pose. "How do I look, honey?"

She hides her smile behind her hand because she doesn't want her laughter to slip out. It's not that Eddie looks completely ridiculous or anything, but the outfit's a far cry from his standard autumn khakis, button down, and sweater combo.

"You look dashing," Dani manages to answer, and, figuring she may as well do the thing properly, asks in return, "And how do I look on this fair evening?"

Eddie beams and offers her a deep bow. "Like the most beautiful woman in all the land."

She should be worried that he doesn't have to fake the adoration on his face. That he doesn't need to take on a role to seem so in love with his spouse.

" _Leave me alone, at least for most of tonight,"_ Dani scowls at her overactive mind. _"I'd just like us to have a good time at this party. That doesn't seem like too much to ask."_

She knows better than to want for too much, though, and wonders how it might feel to be cocksure like a man. Not perpetually on the verge of fading, fading, fading out, her voice little more than static on the line.

She summons up her reserves of courage, though, as she reminds herself, _"Jamie invited you. You can take up space here—wherever here is. Her friend Owen's place, if I remember it right."_

She'd brought the address with them, just to be sure, and she studies the scrap of paper again—342 Thornberry Lane—as they near what she guesses is the correct house, based on all the cars.

It's not like she sets out to analyze Jamie's handwriting, but she _does_ have plenty of experience doing it, as a teacher: seeing which students take to cursive easily and which prefer print, which students have the cramped scribble of aged doctors and which ones offer their letters room to breathe and stand alone. There's a certain languid relaxation embedded within Jamie's penmanship, to the way the letters are angled slightly to the right—leaning but not fully tipped over, as if they're a gardener using a school wall for support while she takes a break from weeding. And she writes with that easy half-cursive, half-print combo, with some letters—the _e_ and _r_ in Thornberry, for instance—clearly joined while others, like the _l_ and _a_ in lane, are cordoned off from each other.

"This is the place, right? Or just about?" Eddie asks, and she nearly jumps at the sound of his voice.

"Yeah. Yeah, we're pretty much right there." She checks the house on her side. "This one is three-thirty nine, so three-forty-two should be across the street and down a tiny bit."

"Alright." He takes a second to check for traffic and, as they're crossing the road, grabs Dani's hand.

"I'm really glad you've made such a good friend from school, sweetheart."

"Yeah. Me, too," she answers, perversely grateful for the reminder: _"You and Jamie are just friends. That's all you can be. That's all you can want."_

She turns the lie over in her mind, repeating it a few times in the hopes that it will cement itself in place through sheer repetition as she buzzes the doorbell.

She can't quite make out who's coming to the door through the warped glass when the mystery person pulls it open.

It's Jamie, and Dani's lie goes out the window as she takes in her costume: a white button down shirt, dark blue bow tie, black blazer, slim-fit black trousers, and what appears to be a wand in her left hand.

Her grin's the tiniest bit lopsided; she's undoubtedly been drinking a bit already, and Dani's glad she's distracted enough to not catch her eyes roving from her chest to her waist to her legs. "Happy Halloween, you two! C'mon in, I'll introduce you 'round to everyone. 'S not too big a party, but not too small, either. We kinda went for a Goldilocks vibe."

Dani gets herself a punch in rather shorter order than she'd planned to, but it gives her something to do with her eyes, with her hands, and it keeps her mouth occupied, too, so she won't gape at the effortlessly gorgeous figure that Jamie's cutting tonight. She can't resist talking the woman up, though, so she asks, after a healthy swallow of what tastes like Hawaiian punch cut with vodka, "What're you dressed up as, exactly, Jamie?"

"I'm a magician. Used to do a bit o' serving at banquets and whatnot back in the day, here and there, when I needed extra cash in the summers," she explains. "Just needed the bowtie and the wand for a prop, it was dead easy to get together otherwise. And you two are from…" she frowns as she tries to place them. "I'm not totally sure, sorry."

"We're the lead couple from The Princess Bride," Eddie cuts in.

"Ah, yeah, yeah, I've been meaning to see that," Jamie answers before she calls out, "Oi, Owen, Hannah! Got a couple friends here I'd like ya t'meet."

A tall man with glasses, a beard, and an easy-going smile, wearing a floppy chef's hat, comes over.

"This is Owen, our fabulous host. He's a great baker and a stupendous cook if you can stand his terrible puns. Owen, say hello to Danielle and Eddie…is it Clayton?" she asks.

"O'Mara," Eddie cuts in as he shakes Owen's hand, followed by Dani.

"Nice to meet you both. And that's a fair endorsement, Jamie, thanks," Owen acknowledges with a laugh.

"Thanks for having us," Dani pipes up, but he waves away her gratitude.

"Don't mention it. Any friend of Jamie's a friend of mine. And this is Hannah." He gestures to a woman standing slightly behind them, bringing her into their circle—she appears to be dressed up as a librarian, or, more accurately, as a book-worm. Dani guesses she might be Owen's girlfriend, but she's not quite sure.

"Pleasure to meet you," Hannah warmly greets them.

They all get to chatting for a bit—turns out Hannah's an assistant to the city manager within their little subset of Iowa—until one of the other guests turns up the radio when "The Monster Mash" comes on.

Eddie gently nudges Dani's shoulder. "Wanna dance?"

She grins at him. "Sure."

Being in these kinds of environments with him seems to bring out their best. There's fewer expectations weighing on them, and they can recapture playfulness from when they were kids growing up. She recognizes, again, with a wistful thought, _"If I could just collect these moments in a mason jar...they might be enough."_

 _"Enough for you,"_ she recognizes. _"Not for him."_

She can sense that in how they dance, in how she perpetually backpedals the tiniest bit so their hands are linked, but there's a decent gap between their bodies. Eddie doesn't seem to mind much, though. For now.

They stay like that for a few more spooky songs, and Dani wonders how they could maybe, possibly, try to breach the subject—this unfixable, unchangeable distance between them—when Jamie interrupts.

"I'm puttin' on summat of a magic show, and I need a volunteer for my next trick. It's a l'il bit of a vanishing act. Any takers?" Jamie asks, her voice droll.

Dani's years of modeling good classroom behavior kick in, and her hand reflexively shoots into the air.

Jamie grins and beckons at her, and she's powerless to do anything but follow.

"Alright, so we've got someone who's ready to step up. I'll have you know that this task is _not_ for the faint of heart," she intones with mock seriousness.

"Well, I've seen kids eat glue and accidentally put their fingertips into pencil sharpeners, so I think I can handle whatever we're going to do," Dani banters back.

"Cheeky. I like that." Jamie nods briskly and Dani begs her brain to follow along with whatever she's doing, but it's jammed on replay mode.

"Now, if you could just close your eyes, please."

Dani squeezes them shut. "Done."

"Okay, just hang on a moment…"

She registers a bit of movement, hears Jamie walk away from her, hears a slight clinking of glassware in the kitchen, followed by the solid _thud_ of said glassware hitting the table in front of her.

"Go ahead and open your eyes now—yep, that's good," Jamie adds, and her knees tremble the slightest bit for a second at what she imagines could be an innuendo hidden within her encouragement. "Our trick, should you accept, is going to be...to make this apple pie moonshine disappear!" she announces dramatically.

Dani manages to ask, around her laughter, "All that for a spot of drinking?"

Jamie shrugs. "I'm a troublemaker. Always have been, always will be."

Dani shakes her head in bemusement. "I'm usually not, but…" she holds the hot beverage up to her nose and takes a sniff. "This smells delightful. What's in it?"

"Ah-ah-ah, a true magician never reveals her secrets."

"Or the true maker's secrets, seeing as I brewed it," Owen calls, drawing a laugh from both ladies.

Jamie winks at her as they clink their half-filled glasses together. "Cheers, mate."

Dani gulps her drink down greedily, faster than she should, but since she can't indulge in the sin she truly wants, she's hoping the booze will make for a passable substitute.

Jamie blows out a long breath as she finishes her drink, smacks her lips, and crows, "Thank you, Dani, you've been a wonderful assistant!" She gives a deep bow, and Dani revels in how Jamie's voice carries, in the surprised look on Eddie's face at hearing her name, her _true_ name, as she answers in kind, her voice matching the brunette's volume, "And you've been a stellar magician, Jamie! Consider me impressed."

She shrugs. "Eh, it wasn't anything special beyond presentation."

"Still," Dani insists, and she can't quite say why she wants Jamie to believe in herself, but she does, "it takes a certain amount of panache to pull it off. And you seem to have that for tonight, at least."

"That would be Owen's doing," she answers, pointing at him. "Liquid courage in the form of that moonshine. Stuff's delicious, but definitely dangerous. Think I'm gonna lay off it for most of the rest of the night."

Owen claps Jamie on the back as he steps up to take over as festivities leader. "A wise choice, my friend. I hope you'll all find our next activity, bobbing for apples, quite... _a-peel-ing_ , should you wish to partake in it."

Hannah and Jamie simultaneously groan, but Dani can't quite stifle a giggle.

Owen gestures at her. "See? The puns are good! Got one whole laugh!"

"Only because Dani's being polite," Hannah teases him, but her eyes twinkle as she tosses the barb at him.

Dani finds Eddie amidst the dozen or so people mingling in the living room and, emboldened by her slight inebriation, asks, "Do you wanna bob for apples with us?"

"Uh, no thanks." His smile's a bit too wide, and it almost flips all the way over to a frown. His deflated face reminds her of overly flat pancakes. "You're doing that, then?"

"Sure, why not?" she answers back quickly, not waiting for his response as she retreats back to the kitchen.

Jamie's rummaging in her pockets for something. "Shite, I coulda sworn I had a hair tie," she mutters.

"Here." Dani slides hers off her wrist to hand it over and she's not going to freak out about this. About this fleeting, yet oddly intimate connection they've established. About the fact that she could just quietly, accidentally leave a little piece of herself behind for Jamie to take.

The concept of contributing to such a clandestine theft—an unknown one, even, by Jamie—sends a shockwave through her bones, and that thrill only grows stronger as she crouches over one of the basins on the kitchen table, her bravery emerging in a devilish grin. "I haven't done this in a while, but I'm ready to play if you are."

Jamie's face lights up with surprise for a second at her tone before she recovers and smirks back at her. "Alright, then. Let's see whatcha got, teach."

Ok. She'll let herself freak out about that challenge. At least it doesn't matter if she's blushing furiously, since no one can see her telltale embarrassment now that she's ducked her face close to the water.

It's frigid, and she sloshes some of it down the front of her dress as she whips her head up, the first apple clamped firmly between her front teeth. She considers calling it quits at that point, but then Jamie's side-eyeing her, already bobbing for her second apple, and what's she supposed to do, just _let_ herself lose?

" _No,"_ some part of her whispers. She lets life run her over like a cement mixer all too often, lets her desires get squashed.

She doesn't bother to sweep her hair out of the way as she lunges back toward the basin, trying to at least match her friend.

"Only fifteen seconds to go!" Owen calls while Hannah and a few of their other friends egg them on.

Dani only gets one more apple out to Jamie's two, but watching her take a ferocious bite of the fruit—watching some of its juice drip past her lips, watching her swipe at the corner of her mouth with her tongue—feels like a hell of a consolation prize.

She's careful to not drink too much more, since she's still a bit of a lightweight, but she finds, as the party carries on, that she doesn't need to. Because being around Jamie outside of school constitutes one hell of a buzz. One she can resist only by forcing herself to continually orbit around Eddie.

Until the end of the night, as they're all saying goodbyes, and she and Eddie are thanking Owen again for his hospitality, exchanging the standard "Nice to meet you"s with the other guests, when Jamie pulls her into an unexpectedly tight hug.

Dani swears she can catch a whiff of something floral nearly embedded in her bones, but she doesn't dare inhale any deeper, even as her nostrils twitch.

"Thanks for the invite," Dani murmurs, and _God,_ if she could just move a few inches to her right, she's pretty sure (she knows) that she could press her lips to the shell of Jamie's ear.

"Really glad you came," Jamie whispers back to her, and her voice normally doesn't go that low and Dani wills herself to not bite her bottom lip at the shift in register. She lets go and they each take a step back. "You know how to liven up a party, don'cha?"

She shrugs demurely. "Once in a while. Most of the time I'm—we're—" she corrects herself, "regular homebodies."

Jamie shrugs back at her. "'S not a bad way to be, either," and Dani just wants to point it out to Eddie. To say, _"Look. This is what it's like when two people are in sync."_

"Be seein' you around school, then?" Dani asks, though they both know that's not a question.

"Yeah," Jamie grins and nods. "Be seein' you."

She and Eddie are just pulling into their driveway when Dani catches her mistake from earlier.

When she'd had that little thought of, _"I just want us to have a good time at this party."_

Her heart soars and sinks as she realizes there are two very different people making up that "us" for her, and two opposing answers to that question.


	7. Chapter 7

Dani flounders a bit once mid-November hits. She always does: the approaching holiday extravaganza from Thanksgiving to Christmas is heaven for kids, and hell for teachers.

She's forced herself to learn the intricacies of football so she has an excuse to chat with Eddie's father when they go over to the O'Mara home for Thanksgiving, but she can never stay out of the kitchen too long, and Judy's consternation at not having grandkids yet only feeds into Eddie's, and just once, Dani longs for an unbothered silence rather than one that hangs like the thick moisture of any sweltering afternoon in August.

They finally break it on the drive home.

"Why's it never a good time for us to discuss having kids, Danielle?" Eddie asks, his voice colder than the frigid air outside.

"It's just—it's a lot," she mutters back, and realizes, no, it's more than that, and she tells him, with no small note of force, "It's _everything_ , Eddie. I mean, my only option, really, is to have being a mom be my entire existence. I've _lived_ the alternative, and I could never do that to a child."

"No one's saying you would! You'd be a great mom, I'm sure, you're amazing with the kids at school."

She wills herself not to scream, but strangles the air in front of her instead. "It's not—you just—you're not _hearing me,"_ she emphasizes, keeping her voice as neutral as possible, the way she has to when she's trying to course-correct with a misbehaving student. "I'd have to just completely give myself up for this child, and I—I don't know if I can do that, if I can just drop everything. And even if I can, what if I'm not good enough?"

He looks at her askance for a second, clearly less than thrilled by her admission, but he recovers quickly. "Those are the types of things that good parents worry about! I'm scared, too, but some fear is healthy," he insists.

She doesn't know what to say or how to speak her truth—that she may just not want to be a mother—without sounding like an unfeeling shrew, so she lets it go.

The silence simmers, but they don't acknowledge it.

The sex, weirdly, gets better—probably thanks to the not-so-healthy toxicity now boiling between them, but she can get off during it once in a while now.

Dani's happy to carve out small victories where she can—large ones seemingly won't fit in her life.

**

December blows by in a blur, aside from the frozen minutes spent scraping ice and frost off her windshield every damn morning, but at last, at long last, the day before the most holy of all school holidays: Christmas break (it's technically called "winter break" now, to be more inclusive, but no one's really taken to that in their neck of the woods). And, sure, there'll be work to do, what with prepping for the new semester, but all of her final assignments are graded and submitted, so she can at least recuperate for the first couple of days off.

And for now, Dani's dressed down in a cozy, oversized red sweater decorated with candy canes, plus her favorite pair of blue jeans, she's had the soundtrack to _A Charlie Brown Christmas_ playing softly in the background for most of the day, and her kids, shockingly, haven't been too hyper—everyone seemed to have learned their lesson from Halloween this year, as some of the candy got swapped out for apples and oranges.

Not to mention, it's Friday.

She's entirely too grateful she'll get to see Jamie before break—they've missed their weekly lunches a time or three thanks to the general craziness of working and wearing a multitude of hats in a public school, but this is the first time they'll be well and truly unable to see each other for more than a week. For more than a few days, even, as they occasionally cross paths in the halls, too.

She's still not sure if she's going to give Jamie the small Christmas gift she's got in her jeans pocket: a couple of gift cards, $10 each, one to the local nursery and one to her favorite cafe. It'd been difficult to choose between the two, and Dani ultimately decided, _"Screw it, I'll get both. And if I don't give them to her, well...either I can use them or gift them to someone else."_

Jamie pops in without knocking, these days, so long as Dani's door is open, and she loves the easy sense of comfort the two of them have cultivated ever since they met before the school year, the way Jamie greets her with an absurdly familiar, "Hey, you. Bet you're ready for break, too, huh?"

She breathes a sigh of relief. "Absolutely. Things calmed down here after Wednesday, but…"

Dani hesitates, always a touch unsure of just how much of her home life she should dredge into the classroom, but Jamie tilts her chin up at her, lifts her eyebrows as if to say, _"Go ahead,"_ and she obliges.

"It's not just the school stuff that's been wearing me down, lately," she admits after taking a couple bites of her salad.

"What is it, then?" Jamie asks as she dips the end of her Italian bread slice into her tomato soup.

"It's—" she nearly says it's Eddie, but it's not just him. It's the whole world that's set her up for this, really. She changes tact.

"Do you ever feel like you're not cut out to be a mom?"

To her surprise, Jamie's normally open face shuts down a bit, and she lets out a low whistle. "Yeah. Yeah, you could say I've thought that."

Dani frowns and barely stills her hand from reaching out toward Jamie. "What do you mean?"

"I've told you my parents got married young, popped a few kids out, split, yeah?"

Dani nods, and Jamie continues, "Well, I usually leave out the next bits cause they're just—" she blows out a breath and murmurs to herself, almost more than Dani, "I a'ways wonder if I could've done somethin' different. If I could've kept us together, taken better care of Mikey."

"But you were just a kid, too," Dani whispers, wishing she could somehow absolve Jamie of whatever guilt might cling to her, or even absorb it herself.

"Aye," Jamie nods. "And kids can't take care of kids. Kids make mistakes." Her laugh is part rueful, part bitter. "Kids don't remember to watch over a pot while it boils, and, erm...I've got the marks to prove it."

She pulls up the sleeve of her cream-colored sweater, revealing an angry, red, jagged line running up the underside of her left wrist to her forearm, with smaller lines spreading like tree branches.

Dani finally cracks and stands up, walks around her desk, to Jamie, and ghosts over the scar-garden with her fingertips before she realizes she's doing it. "Sorry," she murmurs.

"'S fine," Jamie answers, shrugging it off. "Anyway. Yeah, I think I'll stick to taking care o' me plants. Motherhood—I guess parenthood, if you wanna be fair, but _especially_ motherhood, requires such an absolute commitment," Jamie reiterates, and Dani's nodding fervently now.

"Exactly! And it's just expected for us—for women—to give and give and give until there's nothing of ourselves left," she goes on, and she finally voices one of her truths. "And I don't know if I wanna do that. But to Eddie, and to his mom, that sounds crazy. _I_ sound crazy."

"You seem perfectly sane to me, Dani," Jamie reassures her, just before she shoots her a smirk. "For a teacher." But there's a warmth to the little dig that keeps it from really being a barb.

"Thanks," Dani answers, and that seals it, she's doing this. _"If Jamie can be that brave, so can I,"_ she thinks. She's not sure if dishing out a pair of potentially overly personal gifts counts as bravery, but it's close.

She pulls the gift cards out of her pockets. "Er...when I was out shopping a couple weeks ago, I found a couple of things I thought you might enjoy." She passes her the gift cards. "Scruggs Nursery is really great for any type of gardening needs, though I'm sure you probably already knew that, and Eat at Joe's is an amazing greasy spoon diner." A bit of a smirk flits over her face now, too. "If you don't like their coffee, you're a lost cause on that front."

"Th-thanks, Dani," Jamie murmurs. "I haven't been to Scruggs in a while, actually, so thanks for this, and I'll have to let you know how Joe's is." She rubs at the back of her neck for a second, then admits, "I wasn't sure if we were doing gifts, but I _do_ actually have something for you. Mind if I run out and grab it?"

Dani feels her eyebrows lift in surprise and she responds, "No, not at all."

Jamie returns a few minutes later with a floral arrangement that looks similar to the one Eddie had gotten her, but, on closer inspection, the pink hues somehow come through more brightly, and the white lilies are a crisper, cleaner color, too.

" _Jamie,"_ Dani breathes. "These are gorgeous."

Jamie rubs the back of her neck again. "They're alright. Took a bit o' work to nurture 'em, not too much, but I figured you were worth the effort."

Her heart skips a good four beats on hearing that and she's definitely, definitely gonna redefine what bravery is right now.

She gently, reverently places the arrangement on her desk, gets up, and steps toward Jamie—thank God the woman had the sense to shut her classroom door when she'd come back.

She's not sure what she'll say yet, but she starts stumbling toward words. "I—for so long, I've felt so cold," she whispers. "Even in the summer, when we first met."

"What're you saying, Dani? You need me to check your classroom's heater?" Jamie asks, her voice low, and—Dani's gotta admit, she's pleased to hear it—the slightest bit panicked.

Dani shakes her head. "Not cold like that. Cold like, I've never felt the way I'm supposed to when Eddie kisses me. Not when he was my boyfriend. Not when he was my fiancee. Not now, when he's my husband."

Jamie leans into her and their foreheads are nearly pressed together. "And you're telling me this because…?"

She lets herself tip off the precipice she's been edging toward ever since she first heard Jamie swear on that fateful day in July. "I don't want to feel that way anymore," she whispers, hoping, nearly praying, that Jamie can suss out her request.

Jamie looks at her, _really_ looks at her, to confirm, and Dani offers one clear, firm nod.

"I can fix that," Jamie murmurs against her lips, and she's got one hand cupping Dani's jaw, her fingers tangling gently in her hair, and the other's on her waist as they kiss soft and slow.

Dani follows her pose, her touches, and releases thirteen years of weight, of waiting, on the exhale as she lets out a sigh, a signifier, a confirmation. A statement of, _"This is how it's supposed to be. This was always how it's supposed to be."_

Jamie's lips quirk up in a smile against hers and she whispers, "Happy Christmas, Dani."

Dani leans forward, captures her lips again—the first time she's truly kissed a woman, rather than had it done to her, or been led into it, and answers softly, "Happy Christmas, Jamie."


	8. Chapter 8

Dani's not floating on cloud nine, exactly, for the rest of the day after Jamie takes her leave, wearing a quietly pleased smile, but she's distinctly chipper. Very nearly giddy, if she's being honest, for the remainder of her afternoon classes, which are more about supervising students and making sure they've not gone mad on sweets than actually teaching.

A good thing for her, too, since her mind keeps flashing back to Jamie leaning in and whispering, "I can fix that," and she has to stop herself from absentmindedly touching her lips to see if she can still feel any lingering heat from their kiss.

She doesn't realize quite how fucked the situation is til she and Eddie are sharing dinner that night-pizza before they go over to his boss' house for a Christmas party. Because she doesn't mind that she has to go. Doesn't mind that she'll have to get a bit dolled up and put on one of a nicer red sweater and a black skirt. Doesn't mind-for now, at least-that she may have to drive home if Eddie overindulges a little. She can't exactly blame him-Wingrave's always good about bringing out high-quality liquor for his bigger work shindigs. And Eddie never gets to the point of being a sloppy, disgusting drunk, or anywhere near there, really, but he'll tip back one beverage too many, once in a great while. Dani's willing to cut herself off early in the night, if need be.

She doesn't think she'll have to drink that much tonight, though. She won't require booze to keep herself occupied, not when she can call back that residual high of Jamie's lips on hers and inhale the scent of the flowers she'd cultivated for her.

While they're getting ready, Eddie notes, "You must really be glad to finally be on vacation, sweetheart. You've been smiling pretty much all night. Ever since I got home, at least."

" _Well, welcome to a new side effect of me kissing a woman, I guess,"_ she thinks, and after her mind reboots in reality, where she's not allowed to do that, it's easy enough to lie, to answer, "Yeah-as much as I love the kids, having an extended break from school is really lovely."

She can't even blame Eddie for tainting the memory. Because it suddenly hits Dani that she kind of, sort of cheated on him.

More in the technical sense of the word than anything, though. Since, really, she's spent her life-or a good chunk of it, rather-cheating herself out of what she _knows_ she wants.

Still, there's a difference between wanting and having, as she's well aware.

Kissing Eddie should be more difficult, surely, after bridging that gap between desire and reality, and realizing that he's not part of the equation. Maybe it's residual guilt that helps Dani let him kiss her deeply while she's getting changed.

Or maybe it's the tiny part of her that's starting to get sequestered in that moment in her classroom.

It doesn't do to dwell on dreams, but after nearly a decade and a half of longing and finding out that, no, she wasn't broken, that it was perfectly fine-better than perfectly fine-to kiss a woman, Dani thinks she's rather owed an extended reprieve from sensibility.

" _I'll be reminded of my place during this party, anyway,"_ she figures, a stain of melancholy spoiling her thoughts.

She's Lady Macbeth. She'll never get that spot out, no matter how damn hard she scrubs.

**

The party's nice, if the tiniest bit gauche, or maybe that's just her-Dani's rarely been comfortable in these kinds of settings. Where she's unofficially on display for consumption. She manages to dodge that louse Peter Quint when she and Eddie arrive, though, and Wingrave's perfectly friendly, if a bit aloof.

" _Then again, he's hosting the party,"_ Dani supposes as she spreads brie and a smidge of strawberry jam on a slice of a baguette. _"Gotta worry about folks getting too drunk, making sure nothing in the house gets mussed. And Eddie's mentioned he takes care of his niece and nephew since their parents passed away when they were young. Watching them has to be a bit of a challenge, too, even if they've got a babysitter-"_

A loud, brash laugh, hastily cut off, cuts through the air.

" _There's no way,"_ Dani tells herself, even though her neck cracks as she whips her head up, as she walks toward the sound. _"You're crazy. There's no way-"_

She almost bumps smack into Jamie as she power-walks into the kitchen. It's pretty similar to how they've nearly collided a handful of times in busy school hallways, except it makes sense there.

Here? In her husband's manager's house?

With Jamie wearing an emerald green holiday dress rather than her standard overalls or henley shirt and faded jeans?

Dani's not sure if it counts as a miracle or a debacle.

Jamie, too, stares like she's caught sight of a ghost before Dani banishes the awkwardness of the moment. Or at least pushes back on it.

"Hi."

"Hi."

Dani's not sure exactly how to process this- _this_ being unexpectedly bumping into the first person she's kissed besides Eddie in nearly thirteen or so years-but Wingrave, of all people, comes to her rescue.

"Jamie. Glad you could make it." His smile is the tiniest bit grim, somehow, and Jamie's face goes sour for a second, too, before it returns to normal.

"Course. 'Preciate the invite," she answers with a nod, trying to keep her eyes from flitting to Dani. "How're Miles and Flora?"

"They're good, they're good," he responds, a touch noncommittal as he refills his water glass and pours himself a fresh whiskey. "Owen and Hannah dropped off a little box of sweets for them earlier. Cupcakes, I think. Said they had plans tonight, but they wanted to swing by, say hi for the holidays and whatnot."

"Yeah, that's nice of them," Jamie agrees, and Dani's tempted to leave-really, she _should_ leave, should exit Jamie's orbit.

" _Except that's never been a realistic option, has it? Turning away from her?"_

Eddie comes into the kitchen now, too, looking vaguely concerned. "I wasn't sure where you'd gotten off to, Danielle."

"Oh, I just, um," she picks up a glass, concocts what would be the truth, coming from a normal wife, "wanted to get some water. And I ran into-Henry."

She can try to spare Eddie the awkwardness of seeing Jamie again, especially as she replays their rather pained, three-pronged interaction in her classroom in her mind. But Dani's inner educator registers, with no small bit of alarm, that one of the lessons she teaches her kids-not to lie, to tell the truth-seems less and less likely to stick as they get older.

Eddie offers Henry an easy nod. "Thanks again for hosting."

"No problem, no problem at all," he responds good-naturedly, and Jamie's shrinking back out of the kitchen, toward somewhere else in the house that isn't near her.

" _Let her go. Let her go,"_ Dani tells herself, despite every part of her screaming in protest at that idea. _"She can't be yours, and you can't be hers. Let her go."_

Jamie offers her the tiniest head tilt before she slinks away, and it's the first time that she has to think, _"Be seein' you,"_ rather than say it aloud.

Dani engages in small talk, empty chit-chat, with a few people who pass through the kitchen, and she's rather re-thinking that whole, "I won't need a drink" thing from earlier when Henry intercepts Miles barreling toward the island to grab up some Christmas cookies.

"Got away from Rebecca again, have you?" Henry grunts as he crouches down and plucks a third cookie out of Miles' hand, but there's a good-naturedness to his slight ribbing.

"Flora came down, too," Miles pouts. "We got _bored_ of being upstairs and wanted to find a game in the den."

"She did, did she? Well, go find her, then."

"Danielle can take him," Eddie pipes up.

She shoots him a look, but she knows well enough to keep a small, potentially irksome child out of the way when her husband is talking to her boss. Even if it's rather rude of Eddie to volunteer her for the task and the child in question seems plenty independent, answering, "Pleased to meet you, Dani," with a strong British accent when she awkwardly introduces herself.

" _I_ _am_ _only ushering Miles about ten feet,"_ Dani rationalizes. _"It's hardly a bother."_

Especially not when she runs into Jamie again, settled on an oversized armchair with a young girl who, Dani guesses, must be Flora.

She wills herself to not freak out at this chance meeting. To be cool.

She's so cool that she's totally tongue-tied by the mere presence of the woman she kissed earlier. No big deal.

"House this big and four people are all sat in the wee li'l den," Jamie comments with a laugh before Miles leaps up on the chair next to her.

"Miles said they were looking for a game," Dani responds as Jamie wriggles in her spot a little.

"Oi, you're both squashing me. Gotten bigger since I last saw you," she murmurs affectionately as she gets up.

Flora's nod is nearly solemn. "That was _ages_ ago now. And we _were_ looking for a game, Miss…?"

She gazes up at Dani, who's at a bit of a loss for how to reply-she's trying to figure out where these small children gained such impeccable manners-before her teacher instincts kick in. "I'm, erm, Mrs. Clayton. And you must be Flora. But there's no need to be so formal. Call me Dani."

She nods before Miles interrupts slightly. "Anything interesting, Flora?"

She shrugs. "We could play cards."

"How about hide and seek?" Miles suggests. "We can use the whole upstairs. And the attic."

"It'll get you back upstairs, at least, where you're s'posed to be," Jamie answers thoughtfully.

Three sets of eyes turn to Dani, who purposely averts her gaze away from Jamie, toward the kids, given what she's about to say next. "Do you want me to play?"

They both nod, and she nods back.

"Let me just go tell my husband so he doesn't worry about where I've gotten off to, and I'll meet the three of you upstairs."

Tasting that slightly sour word in her mouth reminds her of her infidelity.

Her regret's not strong enough to tether her back to Eddie, though, as she pops into his conversation with Wingrave to say, "The kids-Flora was down here, too, actually-invited me to play a game with them, so I'll catch up with you in a bit."

Eddie beams, and she wants to throw a wrench into the gears she knows are turning inside his head.

"That's really sweet of you, honey. Go have fun with them."

She tries to follow his guidance. Tries to focus on the kids.

That plan comes to a screeching halt when Jamie stops her at the top of the stairs with a gentle catch of her arm.

The physicality comes with instructions.

"Miles 'n Flora insisted we stay here, close our eyes, and count to twenty while they hide. Think they've already got a bit of a head start, though, so we can prob'ly cut it down to fifteen."

Dani can't help but grin. "What, we're gonna cheat in a game of hide and seek against kids?"

"They're crafty buggers who know this house better 'n us," Jamie points out. "It used to be a bit more fair. When we were at Bly. Since I knew most of its secrets, too, even if it was a giant manor."

"It sounds like that place really did a number on you, the way you talk about it," Dani observes softly once they finish counting.

"Yeah. Reckon it did," Jamie agrees. "'S like bein' a step removed from reality, sometimes. Waking up, remembering, going about my day. A lotta eerie stuff went on, it was an old place. Kinda uncanny. Unnerving."

She forces out a laugh as they investigate the spare bedroom just off the landing. "Sorry. I'm sure you didn't sign up for my trip down haunted memory lane."

"It's fine," Dani answers almost immediately as she pokes her head into a closet and shifts aside some luggage. No kids, though.

"You can talk to me more about it if you want. Or not."

Jamie replies, as she gets up from squatting to check under the guest bed, "It left all of us a bit broken. And repairin' yourself while trying to get through life, Dani? It's fuckin' exhaustin, innit?"

Dani swallows hard. Thinks, _"I'm gonna try my hand at this. At-at really brazenly flirting. With Jamie."_

She turns away from her for a few moments, strides over to the door, and shuts it firmly.

It pitches them into near-complete darkness, but she can still make out the green of Jamie's eyes, and her dress, too, as she walks back over to her and catches both of her hands.

She summons her courage as she leans in close. As she murmurs, "I can fix that."

"Thank fuck," Jamie whispers just before she erases what little distance remains between them.

This is no soft peck on the lips. No, this is hands caught up in hair and Dani learning that the catch of Jamie's breath sounds divine and realizing that backpedaling isn't so bad when it's because a gorgeous woman is gently, but insistently, pinning her up against the back of a door with her thigh pressed between her legs.

Dani's senses come to her, though she wishes they wouldn't, while she and Jamie are trading tender neck kisses.

"We-we can't do this, Jamie." Her inner stickler over the English language wins out and she corrects herself. "We shouldn't. _I_ shouldn't."

She doesn't mean it to emerge as an accusation, but it does, just the tiniest bit.

"Takes two to tango, Dani."

Jamie's answer has a slice of spite to it, a pinch of heat, and goddammit if it doesn't make Dani want to _keep kissing her_.

She manages to resist, though, even though she mourns the broken connection afterward. How they rearrange their hair with their own hands, rather than each other's. How their searching for Miles and Flora turns methodical.

Dani tries-too much, really-to make eye contact with Jamie, to have their fingers brush again. Jamie links their pinkies for the slightest moment before she murmurs, "'S fine. We're good, Dani. But you're right. We can't. So we won't. Okay?"

She's spent all her life saying "yes" when she'd rather say "no."

So what's one more time, then?

"Okay."

Going to find her husband after they find the kids shouldn't feel like a punishment. But it does.

Dani shouldn't wonder what it'd be like to clamber into Jamie's Jeep rather than Eddie's station-wagon at the end of the night, once the party's wound down.

But she does.


End file.
